Peak District Crikey Hike 2018

Travelling at rush hour, not that you would know it was rush hour in downtown Leek, meant the sat nav sent us on a roundabout route to the start of the walk and we didn’t actually start walking until 8:50, somewhat behind our intended schedule.  Thankfully the temperature hadn’t started building yet and the initial section along the Tissington Trail was nicely sheltered under trees.  Jill was having a short walk along the trail too, before popping into the café and then driving off to meet us at the morning re-fuelling stop.

Every now and then the trees by the Trail would clear and we could look out at the gentle countryside of the south Peaks.  Sheep were clustered at the sides of fields, huddling in what shade they could.  It may not yet have been 10am but as we left the Trail at Thorpe, we too found ourselves feeling the heat of the day.  From Thorpe we dropped down into Dove Dale, passing below Thorpe Cloud and joining the river by the stepping stones.  There were a number of people about enjoying the weather, including several groups of kids doing their Duke of Edinburgh Award hike.  The young folk all seemed polite and friendly, despite having to hump massively overstuffed rucksacks with them.  Meanwhile I was getting away with a small lumbar pack (cue ‘I’m a lumbar pack and I’m ok’).

The walk along Dove Dale was lovely.  Sunlight filtered through the trees, the path wound below rugged crags, the clear stream chattered past, and fish hung suspended in the water.  It was idyllic.  Approaching Milldale, a woman coming the other way said, ‘Here they are.  She’s waiting for you by the bridge.’  Clearly she had been chatting with Jill.  We waved from the bridge as we arrived, bang on time – I had predicted 11am and it was 11:02.  There were toilets and drinking water, and we also sat down to get some food; breakfast seemed a long time ago.  After 20 minutes relaxation we set off again, though I had a niggling worry about the sole of my left foot.  I was wearing fairly new walking shoes, as was Martin, and I wasn’t completely sure they would cope with the distance.  I stuck with them for the time being.

There was more idyllic riverside walking, including spotting the momentary blue flash of a kingfisher, before we turned off up Biggin Dale.  The ground got a bit rockier, which meant us getting sweatier, and we had to seek out a little shade under the scattered hawthorn trees.  It was steadily uphill most of the way, until it finished with a sting in the tail.  Just a short, sharp climb – the first of the day – but it left us puffing and Pete in particular was feeling the heat.  The climb took us onto a gravel track through a patchwork of fields that rose and fell around us.  It was easy walking and a soft breeze helped with the temperatures.  Nevertheless it was thirsty work.  As we came to the outskirts of Biggin, Martin casually pointed out that there was a pub marked on the map.  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the Waterloo.  Nice place.’  It quickly turned out that the consensus was for a refreshment stop.  We sat inside to escape the sun and supped our beers like we were rehearsing for ‘Ice Cold in Alex’.  As we were readying to leave, the barmaid asked what we were having next.  We had to make our apologies, we had to get on.

It was a bit of struggle to get going again but boosted by our beery beverages we were soon marching up the road, along a dusty track by fields of ripening wheat, and onto the High Peak Trail.  This was flat and straight, and turned into a bit of a slog in the heat.  Stomp, stomp, stomp.  By now I was less worried by my left foot than by the heel of my right foot.  I feared the worst – a blister – and was looking forward to taking the weight off my feet at the next stop at Friden.  Coming into the car park there, we found Jill fast asleep on the grass under the shade of the trees.  We flopped down on the grass too, only about 20 minutes behind my predicted schedule.  In a conspiracy of silence we didn’t admit to our extra stop to our snoozy but patient support driver.

Martin took a powernap too while Pete and I fuelled up.  I peeled off my shoes and had a look at my heel.  Red but no blister.  All the same I switched into my boots, which I had presciently put into the car as a precaution, and they felt much better.  There was no water source at Friden but the bottles we had stored in the coolbox in the car were pleasantly chilled still.  A few Tangfastics and a chunk of flapjack served as dessert.

There was no time to sit around digesting food though.  We were over halfway, 25km into the 40 or so, but had lots more ground to cover.  We turned down into Long Dale and, at first, switched from side to side of the valley trying to find some shade.  Further on the trees disappeared altogether, as did the breeze that had been keeping the edge off the temperatures.  On the top path a group of cows and calves spotted us and seemed to think that it was milking time.  They trotted up the hill and marched on ahead of us, except for a couple of latecomers who mooed along behind and seemed nervous to overtake.  Eventually they went left up the fields, calling as they went, while we dropped the other way down into the valley.

Long Dale is a very pretty place, full of wildflowers and butterflies – fritillaries, common blues, brown arguses and burnet moths – but it is very aptly named.  The sun beat down, the air stood heavy, the path kept going.  We were fairly roasted by the time we turned down Gratton Dale – not much shorter than Long Dale, it felt – and I started feeling slightly out of it, in a trancelike state.  Not quite an out-of-body experience, but somehow detached.  Arriving at the road in Gratton, 32km (20 miles) behind us, I sat down on a bench to grab some more Tangfastics and get myself together.  The others plumped down too and we sat a while, watching the monster vehicles of the local plutocrats trundle down the narrow lanes.

It seemed a struggle for us to get going again.  It was still 4km before the afternoon stop in Youlgreave and 6km more to the finish after that.  I did my best to rally the troops with thoughts of the Bull’s Head, our next meeting point, and eventually we staggered back to our feet once more and marched on up the road.  We had reached a section I wasn’t too familiar with, though I had walked it in the opposite direction a number of years ago, and we made our first navigational blunder, choosing the wrong one of the two unmarked exits from a farmyard.  The friendly resident dog wasn’t much help at giving directions but it was more than happy to receive a stroke and a pat or two.

Beyond the farm were open, shelterless, sun-beaten fields, shorn of the hay that had been growing there that spring.  It was a great relief to return to the shade of the trees as we reached the valley of the River Bradford below Middleton.  I guessed at 10 minutes to Youlgreave – more wishful thinking as it ended up being around 20.  The village took forever to arrive and it took a huge effort of will to keep plodding on, rather than just sitting on the ground and refusing to budge, like a toddler having a tantrum, which was what my instinct to do actually was.  A number of people were also walking by the river – normally a beautiful place, but now just a long way to walk – and a heavily tattooed women, spotting our tee-shirts, read out loud, ‘We are Macmillan.’  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we are.’

Finally, after another short, sharp, lung-busting climb, we arrived at the pub.  Jill was in the bar and we quickly ordered some refreshing drinks.  It was airless inside and the sweat was pouring off us, but we wanted to be out of the sun.  ‘You’re looking a bit done in,’ Jill observed, kindly.

Before leaving the pub – no rest for the wicked – Pete and I got the barmaid to fill our water bottles with iced water.  Lovely.  As it was the shortest leg of the walk next, we dumped as much gear as we could in the car and Martin switched from shoes to sandals in order to give his battered feet a break.  I assured him the rest of the walk was over easy terrain – something which, thankfully, proved true.  We dropped down into a pretty valley with a cute stone bridge by a lily pond, then climbed up a nicely graded path through some woods.  At the top an unofficial sign warned us, ‘There is ONE right of way across the field.’  It wasn’t clear where this unique but elusive right of way was, so we just marched across as best as we could and handily found ourselves at the gate on the far side.  Turning uphill and reaching a minor road, we met two middle-aged women who had taken a completely different line across the field and appeared beside us from a different gateway.  ‘One way’ indeed.  Apparently they were going to Bakewell, some 3km away, though they were hardly dressed for a long walk, wearing flip-flops and with no obvious water bottles or indeed any bags of any sort.

We stomped off – finally, unarguably, definitively with no more uphill – along Intake Lane, down to the outskirts of Bakewell.  At the main road there was a handy path through the suburbs to a park by the river and then into the town centre.  There, at last, was the Red Lion, our destination.  It was 19:43, almost 11 hours since we began, 41.1km (according to my GPS) under our boots.

Jill was waiting in the shady beer garden.  We dropped our bags and awarded ourselves, not a medal as we received last year on the official Mighty Hike, but with three pints of Chatsworth Gold.  Rachael, Louisa and Boo the dog soon joined us and we all congratulated ourselves.  The pub had stopped serving food so we foraged some fish, sausages or cheese and onion pies and chips from the nearby chippy, eating them by the river, then returned to have some more celebratory pints.

There was a tangible sense of achievement and a feeling of joy at having completed the route.  It had been a great day.  The arrangements had worked well, the scenery had been gorgeous.  It had been hard work in the heat and we all felt tired but we were pleased with our day’s work.  We had raised lots of money for a great cause.  Job done.

A Bimble Up The Ben

The sky was grey as I pulled up at the North Face car park a little after 8am.  There were a few other cars and a couple of camper vans already there.  Some lads by one of the vans were getting suited up then taking selfies before their walk.  I got my gear ready and set off after them, noting the helmets dangling from their bags and wondering if they were going somewhere serious, though they didn’t seem to be carrying ropes.

The forecast had deteriorated that morning, showing it to be cooler and windier than previously predicted.  Climbing up the forest paths, however, it soon warmed up.  The lads in front stopped at a fork, debating over the way to go.  With my walkhighlands.co.uk printout in my hand, I walked up to and past them, wondering if they were going to ask me the way.  As if I were to know.  The excellent path continued to climb, sometimes steeply.  The chatter of the blokes behind me slowly faded away and the path came to the edge of the woods, giving views down to Loch Linnhe and Fort William below, and to the hills up ahead, Carn Mòr Dearg (Big Red Rocky Hill) on the left, Ben Nevis with its head in the clouds on the right.  One suggested meaning for ‘Nevis’ is ‘old man with his head in the clouds’.  The old man was certainly living up to that name.  With the wind coming in from the west over the sea, I worried whether I would find myself in the murk all day on the top.  It was too late to change anything now.

Beyond the deer fence at the forest edge, an excellent path followed the course of the Allt a Mhuilinn (Mill Beck), thanks to the John Muir Trust.  It was a steady rise, easy going, starting to feel warm.  The path continues up to the Charles Inglis Clark (CIC) hut at the foot of the North Face, but I was branching off left to climb Carn Mòr Dearg, a fine Munro but the junior partner in the pair of monsters in the distance.  At the fork in the path I sat on a rock to take on a bit of fuel and, just as I was going to set off again, the blokes from the car park arrived, as did three others.  It was getting crowded so I was glad to be off.

From here on the path was sketchier and boggier.  It was also steepening so I kept myself to a gentle pace, trying to make sure I could keep it up all day.  As I climbed, the wind grew stronger and it started to feel colder.  I put on more clothes as I went and soon found the path crossing patches of snow.  Over one of these I lost the path altogether and just made my own way up towards the ridgeline between Carn Beag Dearg (Little Red Rocky Hill) and Carn Dearg Meadhonach (Middle Red Rocky Hill – how do they come up with these names?).  The climb was hard work, despite the steady pace, a real slog, and I felt I could do with something to eat but I knew I was getting near the top.  As is always the way, the top took an age to actually arrive and there were four lads occupying the shelter where I was hoping to huddle away from the wind.  I said hi, wandered around a bit and then dropped down behind a large cairn, with the valley across to Aonach Beag in front of me.  The cloud had been steadily breaking up for the past hour and the tops were finally clearing.  In the opposite direction, the full majesty of the North Face was revealed, from the miniscule hut at the bottom through pillars and buttresses, interspersed with long streaks of snow, marked with the fall of collapsed cornices, up to the white-capped summit plateau.  The top of the north-east buttress jutted up like a black spire pointing heavenwards.  To its left was the climb I would have to make to the summit.  And it looked horrendously steep.  The views also opened up to the south and west, revealing a sea of peaks stretching out in ripples and waves, right the way, it seemed, to the horizon.

The lads were still in the shelter, so I walked past to make the short final trip to the top of Carn Mòr Dearg, the red rocks at the top covered in snow.  There was a little scramble down to get to the start of the fearsome, fabled CMD arête, a knife-edge, boulder-topped ridge running over a kilometre south-east, all over 1000m high with 500m drops either side.  It looked insane and magnificent.  On my own and well aware of the dangers, I repeated as a mantra to myself Edward Whymper’s famous words, ‘Look well to each step.’  For most of the route I stuck to the top, stepping over and round the boulders, occasionally taking the bypass route for some respite.  It required the use of hands a lot of the way, if not always for movement then at least for reassurance, but there were some flat, easy-going bits rather like the ridge on Arkle.  The drops, as usual, slipped from my mind as I concentrated fully on each foothold and the route forwards (look well to each step, look well to each step).  The wind was a constant, buffeting presence, insistent but not dangerous.  The going was hard work, mentally and physically, but what a stunning place to be.  The corries lurching away to either side, the red bulk of Carn Mòr Dearg behind, the snow-streaked hills all around, and that monstrous beast, the Ben, ahead.

Eventually, the effort, the danger, the thrill came to an end.  I felt tired from the crossing, which surprised me as there was no more than 100m height gain or loss.  It must have been to do with having to control everything so carefully, to step in the right way and keep your balance perfectly.  I wouldn’t say that I had exactly found it enjoyable for all that, but it was thoroughly invigorating and it made me feel like jogging across Sharp Edge with my eyes closed.

What I wanted to do was sit down and rest my legs.  However, the ridge had ended in a great snowfield so I had to content myself with standing up, bag off, and scoffing a handful of Tangfastics while contemplating the climb ahead.  It wasn’t all snow, I was grateful to note, but there was quite a bit of it.  A small group were moving up the slope, and the lads from before were coming across the ridge behind me.  There was nothing to do but keep buggering on (as Winston Churchill would say).

The 200m climb was over a mix of snow, scree and boulders.  And it was steep (I may have mentioned this already, but it bears repeating).  I met a bloke trotting down, wearing shorts and a cycling cap.  He had an ice axe and a dog, and said that the wind was worse down here than on the summit.  Then off he jogged.  I carried on struggling up, moving between boulder fields and snow, trying to follow the steps kicked by the party ahead.  For reassurance I took my ice axe out, though the snow was quite soft.

The final bit of the climb onto the plateau was all soft snow.  I knew the top was somewhere ahead of me, but having stared at the peak of the north-east buttress all morning I had to go and visit it, which was slow going in the snow.  At the top I took pictures down Coire Leis to the outskirts of Fort William and across the plateau at the top of the North Face.  From there I pushed on to the summit and joined the thronging crowds around the various bits of broken walls and debris in the snow.  I was feeling slightly sick, perhaps from a lack of food compared to the effort I had made, and put on my sunglasses as the occasional momentary sun glared off the white ground.  The plinth where the trig point was located was fully occupied by people hogging it, taking their bags off and taking photos.  I shoved my way in to touch the top and retreated, only to be stopped by a couple with a Rottweiler asking me to take their picture by the trig.  It seemed like they had only just arrived and they left as soon as I had done as requested.

I wandered around a while, like most of the others not really knowing what to do to mark the occasion.  A number were smoking, the smell of dope wafted my way.  Some had whisky.  A lot sheltered behind the tall mound of the observatory, hiding from the wind.  I had to make do with dropping into the wind-scoured pit surrounding the mound.  I put more clothes on – there were a perhaps unsurprising number of people in shorts, given the warmth at sea level – and ate.  The crowd ebbed and flowed, a whole mix of ethnicities and emotions on show, groups of lads, couples of all ages.  I knew I shouldn’t hang around in the cold too long, so I packed up and set off again.

One of the big things they warn you about is the difficulty of navigating the summit and the dangers of straying too near the North Face.  There were certainly a lot of dodgy-looking cornices there but the route down was patently obvious from the stream of people struggling up.  I set off through soft, slippery snow, skidding as much as walking.  It must have been a nightmare to climb up.  One bulky black lad stopped a little in front of me, did about three steps as I approached and then stopped again.  Oof.  A young couple, talking a southern European language, were a little ahead.  He had no backpack, though his girlfriend did, and was wearing socks for gloves.

On the steep descent I slowly passed people I had seen at the top, like the Rottweilers, and people who had bounded ahead of me in a fit of energy after their summit rest.  The ‘tourist’ or pony track is steep going.  After the initial, snow-covered section, it was loose, small rocks which were almost as slippery.  There were good sections of rock steps, and some eroded rocky bits too.  At a couple of points in shaded gullies the path was obscured again by snow.  Some people rather baulked at these – but having gorged heavily on danger that morning, I just marched casually over them – and some Asian lads glissaded down one snow bank to cut a corner on one of the many switchbacks.  There were great views down Loch Linnhe and Loch Eil, and across to the hills of Ardgour and Glen Coe.

I left the pony track at one corner and headed off to the ‘halfway’ lochan, hoping no one heading to Glen Nevis accidentally followed me.  No one did.  A good path took me all the way to the lochan before coming to a dead stop.  It had warmed up again, having lost 800m in height, so I took off some layers, took a bearing and set off across the pathless boggy terrain back to the start.  Despite a little bit of dampness under foot, it was easy going and a painless descent.  On arriving at Allt a Mhuilinn, which the guide said was impassable in spate, I was left a bit stuck.  It wasn’t exactly in spate, but it didn’t look like a very easy crossing.  I wandered up and down for a bit, trying to work out if one spot was better than another.  It didn’t look like it was, so I heaved off my boots and socks – which were already wet, so it was probably unnecessary – and splashed into the stream.  It went well for about two steps before my right foot slipped sideways, my walking pole being on the left to brace against the stream’s flow, and sat briefly down on a submerged rock behind me.  The cool water was momentarily refreshing, however I worried about the contents of my bag, so bounced straight back up and in two steps was on a dry rock again.  No harm done, it seemed, a damp bum, a wet sleeve where I had caught myself, and a little damp on my bag.  It was only later that I found my watch, on my underwater hand, died a death from its baptism.  Oh well, the battery was probably on its last legs anyway.

The final stroll back through the woods were a delight of easy walking and I found my pace was pretty good too, even if I was feeling tired.  At the car park a pretty girl was sunning herself, bike at her feet, waiting for her boyfriend.  She said ‘hi’ and I felt like jumping up and down in joy screaming, ‘Do you know what I’ve done?  Do you know what I’ve done?’  At the car a wave of emotion came over me and tears started forming.  Did I know what I’d done?  What I’d achieved?  What an amazing day, the challenge, the fatigue, the utter, ineffable glory of it, the sheer brilliance.  You could say I had become a fan of the Ben.